Between 1992 and 2002, Joachim Brohm, who is currently a professor at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig, undertook Areal, a long-term urban project of photographing the same area—about 600x600 meters—on the edge of a large German city. Over the course of the decade, the area was transformed from a 1950s’ industrial zone to a desirable residential area, with high-quality services and infrastructure. Brohm studied the area with the patience of a botanist and the curious eye of a flâneur: the courtyards, the piles of discarded junk, the heaps of rubble, then the bare ground, the geometrical street plans, and the construction phases of the new buildings.